It is general belief that everything with a beginning surely ought to have an end at some point but when it has to do with startup ideas, ideas don’t necessarily kick the bucket. Ideas are generally ascribed as either successful or failed. Some startup ideas, mostly as a result of innovative instinct and foresight of the founder (s), make a bigger and more refined comeback from a fragment of the original idea. So, it is arguable that ideas do not ‘expire’ but continue to exist in a continuum.
A typical example is Instagram, the photo-sharing app that was recently purchased by Facebook. Instagram didn’t start out as Instagram. It started out as… Burbn. At that time, its major selling point was NOT photo-sharing; photo-sharing was a small feature inside the Burbn app. Kevin Systrom, the co-founder of Burbn, had an idea of a location-based app that let friends know when you check into a bar or some other hangout, it also allowed users post pictures of a particular hangout. By the way, he is a fan of the Kentucky whiskey also known as Bourbon.
The problem with Burbn was… uhmm, nothing. Nothing was wrong with the app except the way people actually used it. Instead of checking-in, sharing locations of bars visited, people were mostly concerned with the photo-sharing feature, and in the words of Keith Sawyer, (Burbn’s Creativity Researcher),
“they were posting and sharing photos like crazy.”
At that point, it became clear to the co-founders that the end of Burbn as a location-based check-in app was near. They scrapped almost everything else except photo-sharing and Burbn became Instagram. Remember that photo-sharing was a small part of the old Burbn.
In summary, whether you are young or old, rich or not-so-rich, educated or not-quite-literate, you are still capable of generating great ideas. Ideas don’t reside as a single entity in situ. It is not a product nor is it a vector (that travels in a particular direction). So, ideas don’t actually expire. It somehow metamorphoses into another idea by dropping some of its ‘dead-weight’.
What matters in the end is this; was your idea successfully implemented or did it fail?
Till next time!
Author: ChuQDennis
